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October 17, 2015

Meme Reveals What Criminals and Politicians Have in Common

It is amazing that the American people have fallen for the idea that the public’s opinion about our Constitutional rights matters at all.

President Obama is preparing to sign an executive order that would require private sellers to perform background checks on people before they sell a gun to them. This expands the long-standing requirement that people who are “engaged in the business” of selling firearms perform a background check on their customers.

Under Obama’s “executive order”,” if you sell some yet-unknown amount from your private collection, you’d be required to perform a background check on the person you’re selling to.

This is, absolute nonsense, of course. There is no system in place for private people to access a background check system. It doesn’t exist.

If I want to sell my gun to someone, I’m forced to go to a licensed gun shop and pay them a fee to run a background check on the other person. They charge anywhere between $25 and $50 for the process.

Not only does that impose an additional fee (that’s felt the hardest by people who can least afford it, and might really need self-defense) but it’s a step that few people will put up with.

The idea that the President can sign an executive order that applies to private gun sales is so far removed from any semblance of constitutionality, it’s baffling.

White House officials drafted the proposal in late 2013 to apply to those dealers who sell at least 50 guns annually, after Congress had rejected legislation that would have expanded background checks more broadly to private sellers. While the White House Office of Legal Counsel and then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. initially concluded the regulation was legally defensible, according to several individuals involved in the discussions, some federal lawyers remained concerned that setting an arbitrary numerical threshold could leave the rule vulnerable to a challenge.

ATF officials, moreover, objected that it would be hard to enforce and that it was unclear how many sellers would be affected by the change. “Everyone realized it would be hugely politically controversial,” said one individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions.

But more amazingly, the Post article (and all articles that discuss gun control) cites polls that claim Americans are in favor of more background checks.